Mytradeshow.ai vs Grip
This is the closest matchup on our comparison shelf. Grip has spent a decade proving AI matchmaking works at the biggest shows in the world; we think the next decade belongs to agents that do the work themselves. Thirty-eight criteria, five deep dives, and the four scenarios where they beat us.
An agentic OS for the show: agents that book and rebalance meetings on their own, plus a multi-event attendee app.
A proven AI event platform — matchmaking, pre-scheduled meetings, registration and onsite ops — run by SXSW, Money20/20 and the largest organizers.
Pick in thirty seconds, then read the rest if you disagree
- You want matchmaking that runs itself — no ops team configuring and approving schedules
- Registration data is thin and you need profiles enriched before day one
- Your attendees circulate across shows — yours and other people's
- Exhibitor renewals ride on proving meeting quality, not meeting counts
- You'd rather pilot one show per-show than sign an enterprise platform deal
- You need onsite operations too: badge printing, scanning, access control
- You run structured one-to-many or many-to-many meeting formats at scale
- You want registration, submissions and side-event management from the same vendor
- An enterprise track record is a requirement — they power SXSW and Money20/20
- You have the ops team and want hands-on control over every schedule
Eight categories, scored
Our scoring, from deals we win and lose against them. Bars are Mytradeshow.ai on top, Grip below.
Thirty-eight criteria, side by side
Capabilities documented publicly, or that we would defend in a room with their team. Nothing here is from a sales deck.
| Criterion | Mytradeshow.ai | Grip |
|---|---|---|
| Matchmaking | ||
| Meetings booked by the system, not just suggested | ||
| Continuous rebalancing after declines and cancellations | partial | |
| Intent scored from behaviour, not only stated interests | ||
| Reason shown for every match | partial | |
| Project / sourcing-brief matchmaking | — | |
| Hosted-buyer quotas and obligations | ||
| No-show backfill with the next-best pair, automatically | partial | |
| Meeting slots and tables managed by the platform | ||
| Attendee app | ||
| Native iOS & Android app | ||
| One app across every event the attendee attends | partial | |
| Self-declared attendance, no organizer gate | — | |
| Profile, contacts and chat persist between shows | partial | |
| AI session recommendations | ||
| Programme suggestions (competitions, calls for speakers) | — | |
| Offline floor plan and wayfinding | ||
| Attendee sees who's going before registration opens | — | |
| Exhibitors & sponsors | ||
| Exhibitor self-serve portal | ||
| Enriched company profiles supplied by the platform | — | |
| Lead capture and scoring | ||
| Per-exhibitor ROI report | partial | |
| Sponsorship inventory and visibility packages | partial | |
| Floor plan editor and stand sales | partial | partial |
| Exhibitor staff calendars and stand rota | partial | |
| Data & integrations | ||
| Attendee data enrichment included | — | |
| Data persists across editions of the same show | ||
| Data shared across events in the network | — | |
| CRM sync (Salesforce, HubSpot) | ||
| Registration integrations | ||
| Public API & webhooks | ||
| GDPR compliance | ||
| Security certifications (SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001) | partial | partial |
| Organizer side | ||
| Live matchmaking console | ||
| Agent-written summaries of what happened | — | |
| Meeting-quality reporting (not just counts) | partial | |
| Session and content management | partial | |
| Registration & ticketing built in | partial | |
| Multi-event portfolio view | ||
| Post-show report generated automatically | partial | |
Something wrong here? Write in and we'll correct it within a week, with the change noted.
Two ways to book a meeting nobody asked for
Both platforms will fill a calendar with meetings the participants didn't hand-pick — that's the whole point of matchmaking. The difference is operational: Grip's MustMeet is a powerful machine the organizer's team drives — configure parameters, review AI-generated schedules, approve, regenerate when someone no-shows. Our agents drive themselves — they send, confirm, rebalance and backfill continuously, and tell you what they did.
- Agents send, confirm and reschedule on the attendee's behalf, unattended
- Calendar rebalances continuously as people accept, decline or cancel
- No-show slots backfill with the next-best pair, no human in the loop
- Ops effort stays flat whether the show has 500 people or 50,000
- MustMeet auto-generates full schedules from Must Meet / Meet / No thanks preferences
- Organizer sets parameters, approves schedules, regenerates after no-shows
- Real-time alternative recommendations when meetings get cancelled
- One-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many formats — more format range than us
An app for the portfolio, or an app for the attendee
Grip's 365 Community keeps an audience warm between editions — within one organizer's world. Our app belongs to the attendee: they declare every show they're going to, whoever runs it, and carry one profile, one contact book and one history across all of them.
- One install covers every event the attendee goes to, across organizers
- Attendance is self-declared — no code, no organizer approval
- Contacts, threads and preferences follow them show to show
- Recommendations get sharper with each event attended
- Solid event app: recommendations, agenda, floor plans, wayfinding, lead scanning
- 365 Community keeps engagement running between an organizer's events
- Across organizers, the attendee starts from zero
- Behavioural data feeds the matchmaking engine — within that community
Seventy million data points, but whose?
Grip's engine is impressive — 16 algorithms, deep behavioural signals, mutual-interest matching. Almost all of that data is generated inside the platform: what people typed at registration and what they clicked afterwards. Ours starts outside: every company and contact is enriched against our cross-event graph before the show opens.
- Millions of enriched exhibitor and company profiles pre-loaded
- Attendee records enriched with firmographics and history
- Matching is warm on day one, even with thin registration data
- What one show learns about a company improves the next
- Rich behavioural modelling — every click, view and connection feeds the engine
- Explicit signals from registration answers and onboarding questions
- Quality tracks registration-form quality and app engagement
- Learning restarts at the boundary of the organizer's community
What the exhibitor gets back
Exhibitors renew on evidence. Grip gives them scanning, a portal and a meeting ROI calculator; the question is whether the post-show story proves the stand paid for itself.
- Per-exhibitor report on meetings, quality and follow-ups
- Agents fill exhibitor calendars before the doors open
- Exhibitor profile is enriched for them, not by them
- Rebooking conversations start with real numbers
- Lead scanning and capture, integrated with the app
- Meeting ROI calculator for the business case
- Sponsorship and monetization tooling is a real strength
- Reviewers on Capterra praise the matchmaking but ask for deeper reporting and analytics
Breadth of the suite
Here's where they lead, clearly. Grip sells registration, speaker and session management, submissions, side events, audience campaigns — and a full onsite stack: badge printing, entrance scanning, access control, location tracking. We're deep on matchmaking and meetings, and we integrate for the rest.
- Deep on matchmaking, meetings, exhibitor data and reporting
- Registration and ticketing via integration
- No onsite hardware — we partner for badges and scanning
- Fewer modules, fewer configuration decisions
- Registration, sessions, submissions, side events and the app in one platform
- Full onsite operations: badges, scanning, access control, tracking
- 5,000+ events powered, 15M+ participants, 2M+ meetings booked
- More surface to configure before the first show
How the two are bought
Neither vendor publishes a full rate card. This is the shape of the deal, not the number.
- Annual software licence in bands (Starter / Growth / Scale / Enterprise)
- AI credits pooled across agents; top-ups and hard spend caps available
- Optional outcome fees (per qualified meeting or incremental revenue share)
- Unlimited seats on Growth and above; Starter caps seats for a pilot show
- Most customers start with a single-show pilot before a portfolio contract
- Custom enterprise pricing — contact sales, no published tiers
- Modular: matchmaking, registration, onsite ops and 365 Community sold as products
- No free trial or free version listed
- Positioned at large organizers and portfolios (Informa, Clarion, Messe Frankfurt)
Four situations where we would tell you to buy Grip
If a comparison page has no losses on it, it is an ad.
Badge printing, entrance scanning, access control, location tracking. We don't sell hardware and don't pretend to; if onsite ops is in the RFP, they answer it end to end.
One-to-many and many-to-many formats, speed-networking blocks, organizer-approved schedules across thousands of participants. MustMeet has run this at the biggest hosted-buyer shows in the world.
SXSW, Money20/20, Clarion, Informa, Messe Frankfurt; 5,000+ events and 2M+ meetings booked. If your board wants precedent at your scale, theirs is longer than ours.
Registration, speaker and session management, submissions and side events under one contract. We integrate with that layer; they sell it.
Eight statements. Count how many sound like you.
What moving one show actually involves
Nobody replaces a platform mid-season on faith. The standard path is one edition, run in parallel.
Exhibitor, attendee and meeting history exported from your current platform. Enrichment runs on import.
Matchmaking runs alongside your existing tool. Nothing changes for attendees yet.
Accepted meetings, attendance and quality measured against the same show last edition.
Keep both, or move matchmaking over for the portfolio. Registration and onsite ops can stay where they are.